Quotas

A portion of the Baltimore Police Department's performance evaluation system, which drew criticism from city leaders who said it resembled a quota system, was ended yesterday after a meeting between police officials and City Council members. Police also said the program will be reviewed. Several council members, led by Councilman Kenneth N. Harris Sr., feared that the form patrol officers had to complete, which required them to furnish enforcement statistics such as arrests and traffic stops, gave the program the appearance of a quota system.

A performance evaluation system launched by the Baltimore Police Department with transfers of the 27 lowest-rated patrol officers is under fire from critics, who view it as a quota system that could lead to civil rights violations by emphasizing arrests. The criticism - from a city councilman and the police union - escalated yesterday with disclosure by the union president that a Northern District lieutenant also had instituted his own unique program giving scores to his officers for performance ranging from one point per traffic citation to 10 for a gun arrest.

WASHINGTON - The Army is so short of new recruits that for first time in nearly five years it failed in February to fill its monthly quota of volunteers sent to boot camp. Army officials called it the latest ominous sign of the Iraq war's impact on the military's ability to enlist fresh troops. "We're very concerned about it," Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday when asked about recruiting shortfalls in the active-duty Army and Army Reserve.

With only a few months until summer, employers and legislators in Maryland and elsewhere are scrambling to avert what they say could be a labor crisis for the seafood, landscaping and tourism industries. The problem stems from a limit on how many seasonal workers are allowed into the United States under a federal visa known as H2B. The program lets 66,000 workers into the country each year for temporary jobs in non-agricultural industries. Though many more foreign workers enter the country under different visa categories - including students, computer specialists, surgeons and fruit pickers - it is the H2B program that has left many East Coast businesses wondering whether they will survive the coming season.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- As a poor nation struggling to compete in an increasingly globalized economy, Cambodia has little to offer factory owner Leon Hsu. Electricity is erratic. Traffic along the road to the port of Sihanoukville includes the occasional elephant. If a truckload of men's shirts doesn't reach the port on time, it might be days before another vessel departs for Singapore, where goods are transferred to a larger ship for the voyage to the United States. None of that much mattered over the years because international quotas guaranteed Cambodia the chance to sell clothing and textiles to retailers in rich, developed nations.

COME THE NEW YEAR, 30 years of U.S. import quotas end for textiles, and in advance of this big step in trade liberalization, political pressures are rising. U.S. textile-makers say this will kill their already damaged industry, and seek an 11th-hour reprieve. But they've had a decade to prepare, and Washington now should focus on retraining textile workers - not on protecting production of T-shirts and towels from a feared tide of cheap Chinese goods. This is a textbook outcome of the bipartisan U.S. push for free trade: Big long-term benefits - billions of dollars in savings from lower-priced imports - will be dispersed among millions of American consumers, while the short-term job losses will be highly concentrated in such remaining U.S. textile-producing regions as the Carolinas and in other nations uncompetitive with China.

WASHINGTON - China's promise to impose new taxes on some textile exports will do little to sway the Bush administration as it debates whether to limit the expected flood of Chinese goods next year, trade groups on both sides of the argument said yesterday. However, the European Union welcomed the Chinese announcement and reaffirmed that it would lift its textile quotas without limits. "We're clear on this. We made our commitments back in 1994 and we will be delivering on those commitments," said Anthony Gooch, a spokesman for the European Union in Washington.

LANZHOU, China - The first time Jin Aiguo decided to confess to trafficking in heroin, he said, his police interrogators were being quite persuasive. They had cuffed his hands together in an awkward position - one behind his back, the other stretched back over his shoulder - then threaded a wooden rod under his arms and lifted him off the ground until he agreed to sign the statement they had written for him. "I would say, `I will sign! I will sign!' But after they let me down, I would try to persuade them I did nothing wrong," said Jin, a 32-year-old taxi driver.

WASHINGTON - Concerned that long deployments and an improving economy may thin its ranks, the Army announced yesterday that it is offering some prospective recruits up to $15,000 to enlist for three years - more than double the previous maximum bonus - and hiring 300 more civilian recruiters to persuade them to join the service. "It's got to be plenty tough out there to meet the quotas," said retired Lt. Gen. John M. Riggs, who stepped down this year as the officer in charge of building an Army for the future.

A high-ranking Baltimore Police Department official has denounced the use of arrest quotas, a move apparently aimed at preventing orders such as the one recently issued in the Southwestern District. The Sun reported Friday that three sergeants had ordered Southwestern District officers to make at least two arrests a week, among other activities. Deputy Commissioner Kenneth L. Blackwell issued a memo Friday afternoon stating that directives such as the one drafted by the sergeants must be approved by superiors before being distributed.